NYT writer John Broder wrote about how awful his experience with a Tesla electric car was. He drove it under the speed limit, limited use of the heating, and it still died on the side of the road! Except maybe he didn't realize that Tesla tracks usage information when they're offering a car up for media review (particularly after Top Gear thought it'd be funny to imply their Tesla died and they had to push it to a gas station) and that data shows a different story than what Broder wrote.

That article from The Verge is a good summary, but I recommend reading the blog post by Tesla if you want to see the graphs of the data for yourself. The only claim I can see having any sort of ground is that he might have turned off the climate control at some points to try to conserve battery, but the rest is fairly telling. I'm not sure how the author is going to wiggle out of the disputed claims, or how the NYT will get away with this without retracting it and firing the writer.

Interesting. The owner of a chain of organic-friendly grocery stores in our area wrote something in the Washington Post about his plans to buy Tesla. It was interesting to note that in my recent visit to their newer location, they had 2 electric charge spots for electric cars. It is definitely more than I'd pay for a car but I think for the market out there, it is nice to see the options and a shame for a journalist to try to ruin their reputation.

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The Atlantic examines Musk's charges. Most of them seem pretty inflated, especially the "intentionally ran the battery down" and "never ran out of juice" arguments (the towing company confirms that the power was at 0%).

Interesting. The owner of a chain of organic-friendly grocery stores in our area wrote something in the Washington Post about his plans to buy Tesla. It was interesting to note that in my recent visit to their newer location, they had 2 electric charge spots for electric cars. It is definitely more than I'd pay for a car but I think for the market out there, it is nice to see the options and a shame for a journalist to try to ruin their reputation.

was it MOMs? I noticed the new one in waldorf has two charging stations.

Also, I think it's worth mentioning that consumer reports did not experience any of the NYT problems with their test. If they can get the price down over time I would love a Tesla sedan.

Interesting. The owner of a chain of organic-friendly grocery stores in our area wrote something in the Washington Post about his plans to buy Tesla. It was interesting to note that in my recent visit to their newer location, they had 2 electric charge spots for electric cars. It is definitely more than I'd pay for a car but I think for the market out there, it is nice to see the options and a shame for a journalist to try to ruin their reputation.

was it MOMs? I noticed the new one in waldorf has two charging stations.

Also, I think it's worth mentioning that consumer reports did not experience any of the NYT problems with their test. If they can get the price down over time I would love a Tesla sedan.

Yeah, it was the MOM owner. And if they were able to drop the price, I do think it'd be an option but that'd probably be a few years away :)

_________________You are all a disgrace to vegans. Go f*ck yourselves, especially linanil.

Interesting. The owner of a chain of organic-friendly grocery stores in our area wrote something in the Washington Post about his plans to buy Tesla. It was interesting to note that in my recent visit to their newer location, they had 2 electric charge spots for electric cars. It is definitely more than I'd pay for a car but I think for the market out there, it is nice to see the options and a shame for a journalist to try to ruin their reputation.

was it MOMs? I noticed the new one in waldorf has two charging stations.

Also, I think it's worth mentioning that consumer reports did not experience any of the NYT problems with their test. If they can get the price down over time I would love a Tesla sedan.

Yeah, it was the MOM owner. And if they were able to drop the price, I do think it'd be an option but that'd probably be a few years away :)

very cool. I have a lot of faith that the prices will drop, and fast. Just comparing the price of the Tesla Roadster to the Model S shows how one small company can improve in leaps and bounds. The Roadster was based on an existing chassis, the model S is all home grown, and yet significantly cheaper for the entry package.

They told him to keep going because they expected the projected range to increase as the battery warmed up (which it did, just not enough to get him to the next charge station).

And I doubt a reporter would record a cell phone conversation with support staff for a car review--this isn't exactly Woodward and Bernstein stuff. Tesla might have recorded it. But in the contest of plausibles between "Elon Musk has his tighty whities in a twist because somebody said something less than glowing about his car" and "This New York Times reporter is part of the conspiracy to kill the electric car", I know which one I'd pick.

I am well aware that Musk is going to campaign for the good of his company, but I have no expectations that a journalist from any news outlet, liberal or conservative, would willingly fabricate a negative story about EV cars. Positive, drama free journalism does not sell these days.

But I didn't say that. I said it was more likely that Musk is unhappy about bad press than it is that Broder would intentionally sabotage his review, an opinion informed by reading what each of them had to say about it.

That's a long way from trusting either of them, and I'm not simply dismissing Musk because he's a CEO with a lot at stake.

The speed chart generated by Tesla Motors (shown at the top of this post) says that it derives from “vehicle logs.” And the readings that Broder put into his review also came from the car’s own speedometer. Even if that speedometer wasn’t taking accurate measurements vis-à-vis the universal truth, it was still presumably giving Broder and the Tesla’s monitoring systems identical readouts. Says Enderle: “He should have been seeing the same thing that the car log was reporting regardless of how fast the car was going.” If so, the whole question of tire circumference and 19- or 21-inch wheels would appear to have no bearing on this entire discussion.

And I decided to price out an S, I'm pretty impressed by the cargo space but I'd really like a suvish car next time around for camping trips and what not just to maximize cargo space. Although I might doubt the sanity of using an electric car for camping, at least at this point in time :)

Anyway, the S I priced out with options I'd want and not really being too heavy handed with adding options was $72k. The SUV is expected to be 10% more bringing the price to $80k for a car I'd really consider. At that point, my husband would look at me like I grew a second head if I even suggested such a thing. So yeah, I'd hope to bring the prices down in the next few years, get some more stations up and we'd probably heavily consider it. Our current suvish car (2001 Rav4) is still doing ok and probably has a few years out of it. Although I'm sure prices would drop, I'm not sure they'd drop as much as they'd need to for us to feel comfortable with.

_________________You are all a disgrace to vegans. Go f*ck yourselves, especially linanil.

But I didn't say that. I said it was more likely that Musk is unhappy about bad press than it is that Broder would intentionally sabotage his review, an opinion informed by reading what each of them had to say about it.

That's a long way from trusting either of them, and I'm not simply dismissing Musk because he's a CEO with a lot at stake.

Got it, I apologize for misconstruing your words.

My personal take is that they both are being massive egotists. I think Broder tried to make for some dramatic journalism and tried to screw with the car. I believe that the way he drove it proves that EV cars are not designed to be driven precisely the same way as petrol cars. So in that respect, he successfully exposed a failing in EV capacities. I believe the data that shows he never limped along at 45mph, and I believe the data that shows that he did a series of rapid accelerations and decelerations at the service station, which could very well have significantly affected battery life (Top Gear "proved" this as well), but that shouldn't be a shock to anyone. If I run my hand held 18v lithium ion drill at full speed or use the hammer drill feature, the battery dies much faster than when I am using it at the low setting, even if I'm just trying to put in the same number of screws. Much of his findings were via idiotic moves, first and foremost being that he didn't charge the car overnight, and the second being his use of high speed (his first leg averaged over 80 mph for 114 miles, whether you're using gas, diesel, or electricity, that is far from an economical driving technique. Lastly, Broder's claim was either really poorly written/edited, or was just a flat out lie:

Musk shot himself in the foot by not having GPS data (if it truly was disabled as Tesla claims), I will bet that every single car loaned out to the press from now on will have it engaged. And if Tesla recorded conversations at their customer support office, releasing those recordings would answer everything.

Here is one great example of why I'm more willing to give Musk the benefit of the doubt than the NYT:

Ok. I think I agree with Wired that Telsa lost the PR battle by waging it: assume that the instrument logs are correct and Broder isn't--he was driving about 50 mph in a 65 mph zone, rather than 45 mph. That, to me, shows a good faith effort to conserve power, and works against Tesla's claims of skulduggery. And 80 mph isn't efficient driving, but it's absolutely typical driving, which is what Broder was trying to emulate.

I dunno. I want electric cars to succeed, but I kind of think Musk is a crasshole now. He probably would have been better off giving a more levelheaded response.

And I decided to price out an S, I'm pretty impressed by the cargo space but I'd really like a suvish car next time around for camping trips and what not just to maximize cargo space. Although I might doubt the sanity of using an electric car for camping, at least at this point in time :)

Anyway, the S I priced out with options I'd want and not really being too heavy handed with adding options was $72k. The SUV is expected to be 10% more bringing the price to $80k for a car I'd really consider. At that point, my husband would look at me like I grew a second head if I even suggested such a thing. So yeah, I'd hope to bring the prices down in the next few years, get some more stations up and we'd probably heavily consider it. Our current suvish car (2001 Rav4) is still doing ok and probably has a few years out of it. Although I'm sure prices would drop, I'm not sure they'd drop as much as they'd need to for us to feel comfortable with.

Same with us. Not that we want to take on a new car payment now anyway, but if we had to, the current car of choice would be the Ford Flex to replace her Mazda3 as the family truckster. Our price point would be somewhere near the $30k mark for a new Flex so a $70k+ Tesla unfortunately wouldn't even be in the running right now.

Ok. I think I agree with Wired that Telsa lost the PR battle by waging it: assume that the instrument logs are correct and Broder isn't--he was driving about 50 mph in a 65 mph zone, rather than 45 mph. That, to me, shows a good faith effort to conserve power, and works against Tesla's claims of skulduggery. And 80 mph isn't efficient driving, but it's absolutely typical driving, which is what Broder was trying to emulate.

I dunno. I want electric cars to succeed, but I kind of think Musk is a crasshole now. He probably would have been better off giving a more levelheaded response.

Yeah I definitely agree that he came off more like an internet tough-guy hoping to establish a "Musk Pwned" meme vs the founder of a car company. That being said, the average speed doesn't tell the whole story. How they mathematically got to that average speed is more important, because the stopping/starting/speeding up/slowing down is what's going to kill the battery quickly.

As for reverse hybrids, there is a really cute car coming out soon, the Ford C-Max. The plug in and can turn to running on gas if needed is only like $32K and its sort of one of those crossover suvish vehicles. http://www.ford.com/cars/cmax/

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As for reverse hybrids, there is a really cute car coming out soon, the Ford C-Max. The plug in and can turn to running on gas if needed is only like $32K and its sort of one of those crossover suvish vehicles. http://www.ford.com/cars/cmax/

That seems awesome but the cargo space is a bit disappointing. It is good news in general though that more of these cars are coming out.

_________________You are all a disgrace to vegans. Go f*ck yourselves, especially linanil.